Tom Page Creative

Truth Is Greater Than Originality

An Interview with Danny Dyson

Conducted April 29th 2019

Danny Dyson is one of the Gold Coast’s new rising stars, known for his late night tunes on Instagram, and his extensive listing of local gigs, Danny is quickly becoming a recognised and sought after talent all the way from Byron Bay to the peaks of Mt Tambourine.

Meeting at a local café, we discussed family, life, music and career. I was eager to get to know this humble man who refused to let me buy him a coffee, instead shouting me lunch.

Thomas: “You’re quite a creative person, not only a musician but you’re also doing a lot of graphic design and filmography; I’m curious at what age you started playing music?”

Danny: “I’ve been playing music my whole life. There’s a photo of me when I was about two jamming out on an acoustic guitar. I’ve been learning and playing music ever since, and now for the last two years I’ve been playing professionally full time. I had this real itch to play and perform and to explore what I could do with music as a solo artist.”

TP: “But you’re not just gigging with cover songs, you’re also writing a lot of your own tunes. And so I’m curious who you create music for, and what message you hope to get across.”

DD: “It’s a way of expressing what I’m going through; basically like thinking out loud to the world. But at the same time I try to keep it ambiguously so that anyone can find their own story in it, and put their own meanings into it. It’s a great way to process, like talking with a psychiatrist.
Song writing is like going to the gym; the more you go, the stronger you get and the easier it is to just jump straight into the flow.”

Danny at 2 years old jamming out on the guitar. Photo source (Dyson, 2018)

TP: “Ok so this is a little bit of a curveball question, but at the moment who would you say is the most creative person you know?”

DD: “Ooh, that’s a tough one… I’ve always been a huge fan of Matt Corby. I love how he’s always listening to all these different records, both old and new and looking for ideas and inspiration. There’s this humility in that that I love; he doesn’t have this arrogance that says ‘I can make everything myself by scratch’.
I’ve also met so many amazing and inspiring artists and individuals over the last few years. The Gold Coast scene is very much a community, whether you’re down at Byron Bay or up here in the heart of the city, you’ll find musicians that are as excited and supportive of your work and ambitions as they would be of their own. I honestly love being able to just chat online about different ideas, or sharing and enjoying each other’s latest projects.”

TP: “So you touched on how these different people inspire you to create, is there anyone or anything outside the creative realm?”

DD: “I love old quotes and a lot of the classic authors. One of my favourites is from C.S. Lewis:”

“No man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it” (Lewis, 1944)

DD: “So when I’m writing I never worry about being original, just saying exactly what I feel. And it’s not related to music at all, so you don’t feel the pressure of trying to be musically complex or technical or different. All you have to worry about is being you and saying what you want to say.”

TP: “So when you’re writing do you encounter creative blocks? And how do you overcome them?”

DD: “Whenever I get frustrated, whether it’s from something I’ve seen on the news or just stuff that’s going on in life, I go and write about it. I’ll write down the thing that’s got me riled up, or write down a song title or a single line or whatever the idea is, and then when I come to my writing time, I grab those ideas and flesh them out.”

TP: “So moving now to the more business/career end of the spectrum, there’s often the perspective that a creative career is less stable, particularly financially. What was it in particular that drew you to music over perhaps something with more stability?

DD: “I started busking in shopping centres and it was like a drug, and I just thought, ‘this is amazing!’ I just got hooked, and I saw so much opportunity to go into whatever genre I wanted, or explore anything you wanted to, as long as it was enjoyable for the people listening and for you. I also do weddings and corporate gigs, but I still often do gigs that don’t necessarily pay much just because I really enjoy doing them. You’ve got to balance it out. And I have a day job three to four days a week, so as to not put all my eggs in the one basket.”

Danny with one of his three sons. Photo source (Dyson, 2017)

Danny’s Instagram is full of shots from the stunning locations he plays, heart-warming weddings and wonderfully moving music, yet Danny is also very much a family man, often sharing photos and videos of the latest playtime shenanigans of his wife Naomi and their 3 beautiful boys.

TP: “You mentioned balance as far as career goes; for yourself, how do you go about balancing work life and personal and family life?”

DD: “Originally I actually moved from full time to part time in the office for my family. I could work three or four days and then have the rest of the week to spend time with them. Even now, I’ll have four or five gigs over the week, but the majority of those days are still left free to hang out with my boys or spend time with my wife. And then once they go to bed, that’s when I do all my practising and rehearsing and all of my writing too.”

TP: “We’re almost out of time, so one final question: for someone who’s looking to pursue a career in music – even any creative career – what advise would you give that person?”

DD: “With music it always seems that there are so many rules, and yet no rules at all; people can tour, you can do weddings, you can busk, there are so many different ways to work with music. So just get out there and start doing something. You don’t even have to leave home these days, you can start a Youtube channel, set up a Patreon and have people pay for your music and to support you. Just start somewhere, anywhere.”

If you want to check out any of Danny’s content or find out when his next gig is, follow him via the links below.

@dannydysonofficial

@dannydyson

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Overcoming Creative Fears

Crimson Fists: 2nd Update

And so as the month draws to a close (well technically that happened a week or two ago now, and I’m just slow to write and post things) the next batch of freshly painted marines are ready to join their battle brothers on the battle field*.

Technically I only had 5 models to paint this month, 1 Inceptor, a chap with a jump pack that flies about the battlefield (who I had actually already painted and was in last month’s post); 2 Hellblasters, marines armed with powerful plasma weaponry; and another 2 Intercessor marines to reinforce my existing squad.

While the maths does only leave four models to paint, I’ve had a model sitting half-painted for some time – my Librarian, a warrior that can wield arcane energies**. Not only that but I got side tracked with a few of my vehicles. Now these vehicles aren’t a part of the subscription, and so aren’t technically part of my self imposed painting challenge, but they will ultimately end up in the same army so I painted them anyway.

Now the Librarian and the vehicles actually bring up a couple things that I would like to talk about regarding creative projects. Not wanting to go on for too long or go off on too many tangents, we’ll just talk about the librarian for now.

A Predator battle tank and a mighty Dreadnaught

Firstly, you might be asking, “why did he take so long to finish?” Which would be fair enough, considering the pace I have been cracking through all these miniatures, some of which are much bigger than him. As the Librarian is a character model, he’s somewhat special and I wanted to put extra effort into making sure all the little details were done correctly. This meant I tried out a few new techniques, which is another purpose behind this painting project – learning new techniques and expanding my skill set. But one detail/technique was particularly daunting.

The technique in question is Object Source Lighting (or OSL for short), and as the name suggests, is all about creating the illusion of light or glowing effects. In the case of the Librarian, I wanted his huge sword and his eyes to glow and radiate with magical energy. Now I jumped onto the interwebs and began researching the technique and found that there were a lot of different approaches. I quickly became overwhelmed with trying to figure out which of these many techniques I would use. And not only that, but I still hadn’t figured out what colours I wanted the lights to be.

This uncertainty in colour choice and multitude of technique options left me afraid of making the wrong decision and ruining all the hard work that had gone in. And this fear of messing up is what I wanted to look at.

The Plasma weaponry utilised by the Hellblasters are powered by volatile plasma cores

Fear is a very common motivation disruptor that prevents our creative progress, both in starting a new project or taking the next steps within one. In my painting this fear is usually just a fear that I will mess up and ruin an otherwise good paint job (or at least one that I’m proud of). This fear manifests a little differently in my musical endeavours; “what if people don’t like my music/playing?” “What if my music actually sucks?” Etc.

It is often said that fear is rooted in the unkown, either we don’t know what it is we are going into a situation that we know nothing about, or we fail to understand something about the task we are doing. Sometimes it is simply due to the fact we haven’t stopped to think things through, and usually when this lack of knowledge is remedied, the fear is removed. Take my fear of messing up the paint job; had I got paint in an unwanted spot, I could have just painted back over it (or if it was a huge mistake, strip the paint and just start again). Once I remembered this I realised I didn’t need to worry and could just get on with the painting.

In somewhat of a different vein, I was also concerned about my ability to actually pull of the technique at all – I was afraid that it just wouldn’t look any good. I eventually went and visited one the of hobby stores and asked the store clerk if he could teach my how he painted his glowing power swords. And after attempting to recreate the technique he was showing me I came away disappointed because the sword I had painted didn’t look as crisp and clean as his. My friend who had joined me that day told me “of course it’s not going to look like his. He’s been doing this for years and this is your first attempt, which all things considers actually looks quite good.”

So often as creative I find we can get caught up in the idealised version of the product we originally envisioned before we started working that we can get bogged down in perfectionism. While striving for the best should be an aspiration for everything we do, it’s also important to realise that perfection is impossible. There will always be something that we look at and think “well I could have done this better, or done that differently” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that what has been done isn’t good. This is simply the path we all must take when learning and honing our respective crafts.

So while my Librarian’s sword may not be as bright and spectacular as I would have liked, I learnt a lot about both the techniques and colours involved. In fact you’ll notice that almost all the miniatures this month feature those sword colours somewhere, be it plasma coils, lenses, search lights, etc. By opening myself up to experimenting and just giving it a crack, I’ve found myself exploring various others avenues of possibility.

So don’t let your fears of messing up or not being able to realise your vision stop you from actually creating something. Where you start doesn’t effect your ability to eventually reach your desired destination.

*Well they’re ready to for photo shoots at least, some of these dudes don’t have a full squad to be fielded with yet.
**Technically he wields ‘psychic’ powers because in this setting, magic is heresy to the Imperium of man (but it is essentially just magic)

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Painting Project: Crimson Fists

Earlier this year I happened across a new subscription magazine for a little game called Warhammer 40,000, rekindling the passion for a hobby I had all but forgotten. What seemed at first nothing more than a questionable financial decision, soon turned into a wellspring of inspiration and learning, and not just for painting tiny plastic men.

For those that are unaware, Warhammer 40,000 is a popular sci-fi table top game produced by British company Games Workshop. As with many table top games, the hobby consists of players collecting miniatures, building and painting them, and then setting their armies onto the table top for a war game that makes Risk seem rather tame.

So why post about miniature war-gaming on a largely music blog? Two reasons: Firstly, as a sort of project accountability for myself, and secondly because I’m coming across a few interesting things that apply to creative practises and projects as this project unfolds, and I’d rather like to share those thoughts. And so over the last couple of months, I have been slowly relearning miniature painting, and building up a little collection of Space Marine soldiers.

What’s the project accountability? The subscription sends me a different batch of miniatures and/or paints each month, and I’m challenging myself to finish each batch before the next arrives. Unlike my studies or job, there’s no consequence to not meeting the deadlines except for a build up of unpainted plastic and the sense of failure.

So by posting my progress, I am forcing a deadline upon myself. And if even one person reads them and pesters me about it, then I have somewhat of a consequence. Mainly it’s an experiment in my own time management and a way to train myself to improve my project process.

Which brings me to the second motive for these table top tangents. As I learn things about the process of working on a project, managing time, overcoming unexpected challenges and everything else that undoubtedly comes with any creative project (or any project for that matter) I want to be able to share my thoughts and findings.

These findings will be based largely upon my own experience, but also filled out with some research and study. Some of this will be genuine research, where I may be looking for a new method to refine my time management skills (or something to that effect) while some of it will just be interesting things I happen upon as I tumble down the rabbit hole that is Youtube, or maybe try out a new painting technique.

With that all said, this post is merely intended to be somewhat of a messy introduction. Presently I’m about 5 months in, and the subscription goes for approximately 2 years. I still have a couple of miniatures left to paint before the next issue arrives, but the majority are complete. From here on in, these posts will be more focused on either progress updates, or sharing thoughts the processes and projects in general.

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